AS WITH many things in the music industry, Jim Kerr is spending a lot of time looking back. A greatest hits record and tour is due in the new year – less than 12 months after Simple Minds’ 5X5 project repackaged and performed the Scottish group’s first five lesser known albums.

“When we started Simple Minds, our objective was to be considered as one of the great live bands. A band that had the desire to go all around the world – playing everywhere and anywhere. That challenge is ongoing,” says Kerr.

“I think when you have a long career, it’s not enforced, but that becomes your story. Along side recording a new album, it’s really all about your catalogue. Fortunately for us, with a lengthy career, we can re-imagine some of it.”

It is reasonable to look at Simple Minds as two separate bands. The one which combined krautrock, art-rock and electronica on their first five records and the globe-spanning, Live Aid, Don't You (Forget About Me) behemoth of 1984 onwards.

The concept is not lost on Kerr and he sees March’s greatest hits tour as the second part of a phase.

He adds: “It started a year ago with the first albums on the 5x5 tour. That has progressed and now we’re looking at the greatest hits tour. It’s the second part.”

Some time has passed since Simple Minds could have defined themselves as contemporary, or cool, but strands of earlier work have emerged in bands such as The Horrors. Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie raves about their ‘really hard European disco’ while Manic Street Preachers lead singer James Dean Bradfield has also professed a love of the band’s early work.

“Some of the things we’ve done, when you look back, lost their relevancy,” Kerr continues. “But then something comes along and makes it contemporary again. A few people have been saying that about our stuff now. There are a lot of bands using the 80s as a benchmark etcetera.

“Things come around like that, it’s the same in design and it’s the same in cars. But to be honest, I don’t see it or hear it. Maybe I’ll hear something, like a guitar part, and think ‘that’s Charlie Burchill’ but beyond that there isn’t much.